Ironman Staffordshire ’16 (Half 70.3)

The build up to this race was good. I was in good shape, I’d had 2 poor races prior to this one – real learning experiences on the lead up. These were a few catalysts for a solid performance but I am also very lucky to have such a high caliber of support in my corner mostly from my wife, friends and family and solid coaching from Graeme Stewart, as always big thanks to all.

Ironman Staffordshire 70.3 is a great race, but any race in my opinion with 14 miles between T1 and T2 is going to be logistically challenging no matter how well organised it is. If you’re going to do this race for the sake of sanity don’t try do all your registration and bike bags on one day. Take 2 days, register Friday, try get most of your admin done, rest Saturday then and race the Sunday. I drove down from Scotland on Saturday morning it took me the entire Saturday to get everything in place and it was a huge mission. Way too much admin for one day.

Surface on the Chasewater was like glass on Sunday morning. It was a great swim. Started with the lead pack 35-39 sub 30 minute guys and found myself swimming with the lead pack for a while. A couple of minutes went well at hard pace and I found myself on some good feet. Head up I saw a couple guys pulling ahead slightly but decided to stay on the feet in front of me. My goggles had already started to fog and bridging blind gaps and swimming off line at pace is exactly how I’ve ended up swimming extra metres in the past so I just stayed put. I wasn’t exactly killing myself but it turned out to be an ok decision, got out the water 5th in AG in 29 mins only 100m down on the leaders feeling good.

T1 was real bad…prior to the swim I hadn’t put the skin suit all the way on ie no arms in sleeves just tucked it into back of suit. Thought this way id have less restriction on my stroke as skin suit is quite tight around arms and shoulders. Tried to get arms in… it was too tight. I just couldn’t get the thing on. On top of the usual 2 mins in T1 I spent 5 extra minutes wrestling with it, pointing my arms in different directions gingerly trying not to rip it. I watched 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 positions come into that tent and leave in 3 minutes before I did. All in good humour you know you’re having a shit transition when volunteers in the tent starting offering you talcom powder to get your skin suit on. How about I just swim with it on next time…there’s an idea.

Onto the bike felt good, the first 10 miles were rough going, I saw 1 guy puncture, and the remnants of 2 pro crashes. I almost came off as well I came round a sharp downhill bend, rain had washed loose gravel right into the middle of the road, front tyre hit it slid a bit and lucky I recovered before wiping out. Once on the main road I picked up speed and saw avg speed was around 37kph for the first hour. Id only been overtaking and guessed I was back up in top 10 again. I got passed slowly at around half way but let him go, I felt I was back on plan and didn’t want to get involved. Around 65k I passed the guy I’d come out the water with on the swim, I figured if anything I was back up to position. Went down a huge dip over a bridge and passed 2 more AWA guys. Around 2hrs I started to cramp and it started to rain solidly. I noticed a big drop in speed, felt ok nothing unmanageable but Id gone from feeling great to feeling the hurt up the last climb when I got passed by a guy I’d not seen before. The last 20 mins of the bike was downhill, it was chucking down and there were some hairy wet bends. I slowed down round corners to be safe losing loads of time and one of the AWA guys caught me. We entered T2. 2:38 on the bike, the last 25k slowed me down a fair bit.

Cramped up nicely in T2, stretched it out and exited in 2.5 minutes.

It was still coming down in buckets out there, and very muddy, but at least it was cool. Had some good starting splits but still no one else coming up in sight. The T2 chap had left about a minute before me so I’d have to get moving. Finished my first lap and eventually passed the guy that passed me on the bike on the hill, but still no sign of the T2 guy. The foot deep mud in parts mud was taking its toll on my form and I wasn’t exactly at optimum pace cramping bad but still mentally strong and devout to do well, I passed the 1st 10k at 4:08/km pace not great for me. At the end of my second lap I got passed by the guy who Id swam with, after having passing on him on the bike I wasn’t expecting to see him again. I put up a fight for more than a km but we hit the hill and he pulled just ahead when I cramped up again. Onto the third lap he was about 30 seconds ahead. I passed another AWA guy in my AG, and finally made another quick pass on another who was trying badly to hide his final lap band in his hand. The run was very sloppy. I ran 1:29. and finished up in around 4:45 hrs 6th in AG.

It was a tough filthy fun course and I did o.k – I’m going to hold off patting myself on the back this time because I know I could have done better. Still making rookie errors in transition, and no idea where cramps came from so early in the race. I could have certainly been on the podium had I done better in transitions.